Living & Dying - Maki Kawamura

 

House of Joy: Charity providing free caring environment for anyone affected by cancer

Create a place for cancer patients and families to be themselves until the last moment-

• What do you like to do? What do you value in your life? Not treat their illness, but live their lives.
• Even if the pain doesn't change, but if you just find one little thing, it becomes joy.

You matter because of who you are. You matter to the last moment of your life, and we will do all that we can, not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die. Dames Cicely Saunders

Now and Here - Palliative Care

• I want to live, because I want to be happy a second longer, a day longer.
• The comfort comes from valuing what they value.
• When we don't value what they value, it creates suffering.
• They accept our offers because they wanted to make us happy.
• My mother is losing her role as my mother, more and more each day, because she no longer can move or talk. Even so, she IS my mother. What is the thing that makes my mother my mother?
• Towards our last day, we thicken our knowledge of ourselves. This is the meaning why we lie.
• We are able to know about ourselves every day, be ourselves every day, until the end. Accept not only positive things, but weak and dark sides of ourselves. That's when healing occurs.
• Through struggles, we earn so much. We value struggles because they help us to deepen, thicken ourselves.
• When the baby tries to learn to walk and fall down, I feel pain, too. I can belt him to not let me feel pain. True love is let the people do what they want to do. Repeatedly listen to want they want. Make it possible for them to experience that. Life is not just living peacefully and happily, but experiencing everything that having a body allows us to do. Without a body, we we cannot experience pain or sadness. 
• Try not to do everything by yourself. Let others help you. Try to think what makes your mother smile. Try to create that experience for her. Listen and see her expression. You need to think about your own happiness, as much as you value that of your parents.
• To care for others well, you have to care for yourself well.
• Accept ourselves.